The present invention relates generally to simulators, and in particular, to an aircraft flight simulator including computer-controlled simulated instruments and computer-controlled simulated feel for the aircraft controls.
Use of simulators has been increasing in recent years for aircraft flight training, for training personnel in the operation of vehicles, such as surface ships and submarines, battle tanks, etc., and for training personnel in the operation of systems, such as power plants. The use of a simulator frees the actual aircraft, vehicle or system for use while training is being conducted, and conserves fuel which would otherwise be required for the operation of the actual aircraft, vehicle or system.
A simulated flight instrument display for an aircraft simulator system is illustrated and briefly described in "Aviation Week and Space Technology," Nov. 6, 1978, at page 69. The illustrated display includes several simulated flight instruments. Both the static and dynamic portions of the instruments are generated on a cathode ray tube (CRT).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,060,915, issued Dec. 6, 1977 to Conway, and U.S. Pat. No. 3,815,261, issued on June 11, 1974 to Faconti, Jr., disclose aircraft simulator systems which include simulated instrument displays. As in the above system described in "Aviation Week and Space Technology," both static and dynamic information is generated to be displayed on a CRT or as a photographic projection upon a screen.
One disadvantage of prior simulator systems is that they typically have complex and accordingly expensive electromechanical equipment in order to realistically generate the feel of manual control inputs in response to a manual command. This tends to make the overall simulator such as a flight simulator more complex and more expensive.